Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

One of my favorite structures of all time. When I first saw this painting of it in my brother's copy of the Golden Nature Guide "Stars," it enflamed my Flash Gordon-obsessed little brain, in the way it so thoroughly epitomized the Art Deco universe of that old movie serial I'd been watching on TV. The 200 inch Hale telescope first used at Palomar in 1949 actually exceeds the space Hubble in light-gathering and resolving power, but the latter benefits from not having to deal with the distortions introduced by the earth's atmosphere. However, new image processing techniques are overcoming that disadvantage, I hear. Still, nothing is needed to enhance the building's coolness factor in my opinion.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.